The Best Free YouTube Downloader to Watch Out in 2018

Even in this connected world you often go offline for various reasons. Most of the time, it is not a matter of choice but a mere compulsion. A free YouTube downloader comes in handy when you wish to watch or listen videos offline at your convenience, without being reliant on the internet.

An online video downloader is a great tool to clip a video, save a video for offline viewing, convert video to mp3 and so forth so on. You will get a range of options when it comes to choosing the correct output format.

Not every part of this world has GBPS internet connection. At times, it becomes a challenge to stream a full movie on YouTube or any other online video streaming website. Either you stare at the endlessly moving circle on the video player, or you move on with a fake promise to yourself “Some other time”. That’s the reason, few folks came forward and developed software to download online videos.

Also, not every content on YouTube stays for the lifetime and could be taken down. So, it could be a wise decision to save a copy of the online video for future reference.

In every few months, a new free YouTube downloader is getting launched in the market. You start wondering when it comes to choosing a reliable YouTube video downloader for your personal computer.

A word of advice – You can only download videos or any content from YouTube after you have permission from the copyright owner. Refer YouTube terms and service for guidelines for downloading any resource.

4K video downloader is by far the best and free YouTube video downloader from the viewpoint of speed, functionality and simplicity. You get all popular choice of formats like MP4 –Video, FLV-Video, MKV-Video, 3GP-Video, MP3-Audio, M4A-Audio and OGG-Audio. Audio formats might interest people who are looking to just rip off audio or music from a video, music concert or video podcast.

You just have to copy the YouTube video link from the web browser and paste it by clicking “Paste Link” option on 4K video downloader. As soon as you do this, you will get a pop-up message window of parsing. It will take a few seconds before providing you with an option of selecting video resolution, format, subtitles option, download folder, etc.

The good news is that you can download even the whole playlist of videos, not more than 24 videos, in one shot. You may not find this option elsewhere in the free variant of any other YouTube Downloaders.

YouTube also has a great collection of 360-degree and 3D videos. 4K Video Downloader does support these video formats.

If you are trying to download videos for the first time from YouTube, then you should know that multi-thread or batch download might put a temporary ban on your IP address. However, if this happens, then you can configure a proxy server in the Preference-> Connection tab.

4K Video Downloader has a paid version too. The paid version allows you to download longer playlists with subtitles. It will cost you $9.95 to $14.95 for a lifetime access to three computers. The software is available for Windows OS as well as Mac OS.

This tool has possibly every option that you could imagine in any YouTube downloader or converter. But as if now, we will rate it based on how it performs as a YouTube downloader.

First and foremost, this tool can download videos from more than 100 sites including YouTube, Vimeo, Facebook, Dailymotion, Metacafe, etc. It also has the popular video formats to choose from such as MP4, M4V, AVI, WMV, MOV, etc.

You will get other options such as convert video and burn video to DVD (Only available in its paid version). Convert video option has further multiple profiles, giving you the opportunity of making the converted video suitable for a particular device like Xbox, Apple, Android, and Other Audio devices.

Any Video Converter Ultimate is blazing fast. You may get overwhelmed by the range of options on its interface.

This tool is free but does have some drawback in the free version. For instance, you can only download one video at a time. Also, watch out for bundled software installation while you install this software (However, I did not find any adware software when I installed this software on my MacBook). The paid version, which is also called Any Video Converter Ultimate will cost you around $49.95. This tool is also available for Windows as well as Mac OS.

aTube Catcher is another contender which cannot be ignored and has all reasons to try out once. Just like AVC (Any Video Converter Free), this tool can also download movies or videos from your all favourite websites including YouTube.

You can export the video or audio files to various devices like smartphone, iPad, iPod, MP4 players, PSP, Android devices, etc. This tool supports Multi-language, which makes it an ideal fit for non-English speakers. The interface is clean, and the whole process is fast.

Unfortunately, aTube Catcher is not available for MAC users. As of now, it is only available on Windows platform. Also, watch out for free adware installation while you install the software. Just opt out from any 3rd party software installation by clicking suitable options.

ClipGrab is 100% freeware and an excellent online free YouTube video downloader. Like any other popular downloader, this tool also supports download from all popular video streaming websites. It supports most of the required formats which include MPEG4, MP3, WMV, OGG Theora & Vorbis.

#5. Free YouTube Download

No point in guessing what this software does! It is blatantly simple. This tool enables you to download videos from YouTube. It is a freemium tool. It supports multiple formats like MP4, AVI, MP3, MKV, WEBM, etc.

The interface is simple and packs most of the basic options of any YouTube Downloader. You can either download multithread video or one video at a time. It has an autoload option, which downloads the video as soon as you copy the link from YouTube and head to this tool. Ultimately, saving you from multiple clicks.

The free version of this tool does have a limitation of a three-minute time limit. Free YouTube download is available for Windows as well as Mac user. The paid version will cost you around $19 for lifetime access and $9 yearly.

Over to you

All the above online video downloading software are safe to install and do not contain any malware. Also, you can go for the paid version of any of the above YouTube downloaders if you are looking for a software to download a lot of online videos in one go.

Do not install any software without having a solid review and details about it. You never know if it contains a virus or other malware, which can infect your PC or system. Lastly, please check terms and conditions of any particular online video streaming website, before you even think of downloading any online content. You do not want to land in a pit or pay a heavy fine for silly reasons. Isn’t it!

If you know any other free YouTube downloader then please provide your suggestions in the below comment section.